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John Mayer is one of the greatest Fender Stratocaster players of all time. Ironic really, considering he doesn’t actually play a Stratocaster. At least, not anymore.
Instead, he plays the Silver Sky, the signature guitar he developed with PRS, after he famously left Fender in 2014 and took his ideas for an elevated S-style to a company that he felt was willing to turn them into a reality.
It was a huge move. Mayer leaving Fender sent shockwaves through the industry that are still being felt today.
Not only did Fender lose one of its biggest endorsees, it also paved the way for the arrival of the Strat’s biggest rival – one that Fender appears to be seeking to remove from the picture after hitting PRS with a cease-and-desist, ordering the brand to halt production of the Silver Sky.
Mayer moving to PRS came as a shock to many, but for the man himself it was anything but. Before he left Fender, he began dreaming up an instrument that would put a new spin on the Strat – something he maintained that Fender wasn’t interested in executing.
“I tried to do something like this with Fender, but I couldn’t create enough enthusiasm within the company for my vision,” Mayer told Guitar World upon the Silver Sky’s release in 2018. “I’m not hurt by that. No- one is obligated to be enthused about an idea of mine.”
“I wanted to go somewhere where they would take my ideas,” he added in an interview with Jeff Ross. “It was like, ‘Hey, let’s freshen up the electric guitar,’ because the electric guitar is still always this vestige of 1950s and ’60s car and surf culture. 60 years later, you’re still putting out these tributes to the station wagon.”
Mayer’s frustrations with the static nature of Fender’s designs and his desires to take things in a new direction were compounded by the departure of Mike Eldred, the Custom Shop director with whom Mayer had established a strong working relationship.
His absence meant Mayer no longer had a direct contact to go to when he wanted to experiment with his guitars. That stifled Mayer’s ambitions.
“When Mike Eldred left Fender, that was the beginning of the end of that era where artists really had people to talk to at that company,” he told Ross. “One day you’ll call up and you’ll go, ‘Can I get one that’s got a rosewood neck?’
“They’ll go, ‘It says here you already got two this year, and our contract was for two.’ [Whereas] Mike would send me a thing and then we would do something together off of that.”
I wasn’t looking to create a signature model. I want to go a step deeper
John Mayer, 2018
There were no hard feelings with Fender, but Mayer needed to find a new collaborator who could match his energy. Enter Paul Reed Smith.
At PRS, Mayer found the freedom to go beyond the usual ‘artist signature guitar’ model, working with Smith to develop something grander in its design.
“I wasn’t looking to create a signature model,” he explained to Guitar World. “I want to go a step deeper into the genetic code of things. I’m looking to create a series of instruments that represent my point of view – and have a little desk next to Paul where I can bring some of my ideas to life that, over the years, will tell a story.”
Having that little desk next to Paul’s was key to the whole project. Working closely with the man who started the company meant Mayer could dive headfirst into developing this instrument. It was a far cry from the situation he’d encountered at Fender.
“I'm not talking shit. It's just musical chairs,” Mayer expanded in an Instagram livestream explaining his move. “[At PRS] I get to call the guy whose name is on the guitar, and we get to build stuff together.”
Two years after starting the project, Mayer unveiled the Silver Sky, inspired partly by his 1963 and 1964 Strats. The internet was quick to ridicule the design, dismissing it as an expensive Stratocaster knock-off and slating it for a lack of originality.
But public opinion U-turned once guitarists got their hands on them. That changing tide was emphasized following the launch of the SE Silver Sky, which brought the once-controversial model to the masses at a more affordable price point.
“I knew the Silver Sky would take years to take its place in the world,” Mayer said to Guitar World in 2025, after we named the Silver Sky one of the most important pieces of gear of the 21st century. “And I say this cautiously, but it feels like it’s become pretty widely accepted.”
The sales figures would certainly back up Mayer’s observation. In its end-of-year round-ups, Reverb has continually identified the SE Silver Sky as one of the best-selling guitars of the past three or four years. Indeed, it topped the list in 2022 and 2023, and gave Fender Strats a run for their money in the following years.
Over time, it’s been updated with new finishes, offered in rosewood and maple fretboard configurations, and converted for southpaws. It’s no exaggeration to say it routinely rivals Fender for the best mainstream S-style on the market.
Indeed, there was no getting away from the Stratocaster comparisons – but Mayer wasn’t exactly running from them.
“If you ask someone to draw a guitar, nine out of 10 people are going to draw a Stratocaster,” he told Guitar World back in 2018 by way of explanation. “So, when it came time to work with Paul, it was like, I just thought it would be an easier path to get people to understand that this is a Strat-based body.
“This guitar is based off of the Strat,” he added in the Instagram livestream. “I'm admitting that. I have played a Strat for such a long time in my career that it didn’t make sense to me personally to look down and see a different shape.”
The S-style design, then, was a no-brainer, but it wasn’t all that simple. There are tweaks to the body shape. There’s a three-a-side headstock. Some of the finer details, such as the hardware, have been refined. There are bird inlays.
But overall, it is Mayer’s take on an idealized, elevated S-style – the very thing he was trying to achieve with Fender. Yet he wasn’t concerned with the Silver Sky out-Strat-ing the company.
“I want you to understand that I embrace the Fender thing,” Mayer said in that livestream. “I want to see people play the Silver Sky through a Fender amp. This guitar is made to coexist with Fender amplifiers, with Fender guitars.”
Of course, that co-existence has come under strain recently, and with Fender serving PRS a cease-and-desist letter in May 2026, it seems Mayer’s sentiments aren’t shared by the Big F’s legal team (though they may well be taking note of them).
This guitar is made to coexist with Fender amplifiers, with Fender guitars
John Mayer
The butterfly effect of Mayer’s move is significant. If Eldred had stayed at Fender, and the company had accepted Mayer’s brief to build an updated Strat, would the Silver Sky have ever been made?
By extension, if such a monumentally successful S-type hadn’t emerged in the wake of the fallout, would Fender feel the need to assert its ownership of the Strat design so zealously?
It’s impossible to say. But whatever the legal outcome, the Silver Sky will continue to reshape the guitar market – and the modern-day history of the electric guitar itself.
